Write = Get Reviews Forum The Oak Tree (first excerpt)

                        Old Isaac whispered theatrically over the tavern table to his three mates.  “I felt the chill in my bones the moment it happened.”   They each kept their gaze on him: Finley with enraptured curiosity, Stokes with a cynical sideways leer, and Kearney with the objective delight of hearing what might be a really great story.  “Lightning doesn’t frighten me at all on any other day, mind you, but that one crack that shook the house – it happened at midnight.   I knew then that something devilish had certainly happened because I swear on old Clove’s journal that I heard the thing scream when it was hit.”  He nodded with somber assurance, raising his mug of beer.  He had started his telling.            

“What was it, Isaac,” Finley whispered anxiously.  He had heard the storm, too and heard the town’s rumors of what had happened at midnight that night.  It happened on Isaac’s land, so the old story-teller had first-hand knowledge of the truth.  Whether he was going to tell the truth or spin his own version was always a question.  Stokes huffed a laugh and glanced into his own mug with a shake of his head.  Good ol’ Isaac, always good for a story.            

Isaac glared dramatically at Finley.  “I got up and looked out my window at Tillroy Hill, and…” He looked at each of his friends in turn.  “…I didn’t see the Old Oak tree.”            

“The Old Oak tree?” Kearney asked, brows raised.  “It’s gone?”             

“I thought it had gone, too,” Isaac’s gravelly voice rose and his bushy eyebrows danced over glistening, faded blue eyes.   “It wasn’t until this morning that I saw what had actually happened.  The Old Oak is there, all right.”  Finley froze, waiting.  Stokes looked at Isaac, but crossed his arms. 

“It was struck by lightning and fell over.  No one will be climbing into that tree again.  And more importantly…” His gaze darkened as it swept the faces of his friends.  “No one will be climbing out.”           

He straightened and took a swig from his mug, satisfied that his audience was duly stunned.  Even Stokes’ hardened face registered a glimmer of shock.  But Isaac didn’t put as much importance in his storytelling as he did in the fact that the history of their town of Clove Manor had experienced a point of no return.  He knew that each of his friends came from ancestry that was affected by the Old Oak tree, and even the heaviest cynic couldn’t ignore what outsiders considered a myth.

Finley’s great grandmother lost a brother, Eino, in the Old Oak.  He had climbed into it on a dare because it was known even back then that some people never climbed back out.  Finley’s great uncle hadn’t believed, and he climbed, and that evening his friends ran into Clove Manor crying that the climbing branches had stopped swaying, the boy had stopped calling back to them, and though they waited all day he never climbed back down.  Finley Tobias was named after him. Stokes’s family was descended from the first founder of Clove Manor whose generosity and nurturing nature fostered the community that grew into a town.  Isaac always thought that, considering his ancestry, it wasn’t odd that Stokes always kept to himself and never reached out to anyone.  He believed that it was the Clove family’s history of the Old Oak that caused Stokes’ somber demeanor. 

Horace Clove, the Clove Manor Master’s son, was the first to walk up to the Old Oak when it was still a sapling.  The Master’s daily log, kept under glass at the library, suggests that something horrible had happened at that oak tree, but no one knows what.  Horace Clove’s youngest grandchild Percy was the first to disappear into the Old Oak tree centuries ago while trying to impress his fiancé with how high he could climb.  The nurturing and generosity slipped into decay through the Clove line until its ruin, and Clove Manor itself had been abandoned for two hundred years. 

Stokes might have even been heir to the manor, but everyone lost heart and interest, and no one wanted the responsibility. Since that first mysterious disappearance of the heir of the Clove line, hundreds of children as well as adults had climbed that tree, but there was always a handful from each generation who would climb it and be lost in it forever.  The past century found very few climbers, yet there was always at least a few. 

Kearney Lowell’s best friend and cousin Valen had been lost in it only ten years before while trying to retrieve a kite, despite the warnings of Kearney himself who was standing under the tree.  Kearney had run to Isaac’s house to get an adult to make Valen come down, but by the time they returned to the tree the kite was still there, Valen was nowhere to be seen, and he was never seen again.  Kearney had been devastated and still carried the loss of his friend heavily.           

It was Kearney that asked Isaac the next logical question.  “Did you go see what was in the branches, Isaac?”  His hazel eyes were wet, and Isaac knew that the answer to this was tricky business.  He put his mug on the table and looked squarely at his dear friend.  The light façade of a juicy tale hardened a little.            

“I only saw one thing that I didn’t expect.”  Stokes joined the listeners, leaning forward with his crossed arms on the table.  Isaac had them all, now that this wasn’t just one of his fanciful tales.  Even Finley, who was always trying to predict Isaac’s stories before he was finished, remained quiet to hear. 

“I walked up and inspected the black, charcoal stump and fallen trunk where it had been hit, then of course I realized that I could finally see what was in the branches without the danger of disappearing –“            

Melanie Camille approached the table with a pitcher of beer.  “You look so serious, boys,” she laughed, her charming smile wavering at the tension she could feel around the four men, that she felt around each person in the tavern.  Melanie’s great-great grandmother Erma had climbed the tree and not come down 150 years earlier.  Everyone knew that the Old Oak tree was on Isaac’s land, and the rumors of what happened the night before had already spread through town.  Another table of luncheon-goers had coaxed Melanie to try to get news out of Isaac.            

Isaac looked up at her while Finley, Stokes and Kearney leaned back to take-on unassuming airs.  Before he could make an excuse to her now-solemn face, a voice piped-up from the table near the stairs, “What’s in the Old Oak tree, Isaac?”  It was Franz Hogaboum whose ancestor disappeared in the Old Oak 300 years ago.  It was a general hope, no matter how long ago a relative or friend disappeared into that three, that what goes up must someday come down.  Irrationally, there was an air of anticipation for good news among the townspeople in the tavern that afternoon, and an expectation of dismal reality.            

Isaac suddenly felt a great weight on his soul.  Glancing back at his friends, then at Melanie, he stood and moved to the middle of the room.  What am I about to start, here? he thought to himself.  But it couldn’t be avoided.            

“I saw a door,” he said.  He thought he had said it loudly and surely for all to hear, but when it came out he realized he had only muttered it.  Somehow, even then, everyone in the place heard him.  The only thing audible after his statement was the motor of cars stopping and passing outside, and the clunk of Melanie setting down her half-pitcher of beer with a shaky hand.            

“There was a door in the tree?  In the trunk?”  Franz echoed.            

Isaac nodded.  “It’s rounded on the top, and the frame is puckered-out like a long, bent knot in the tree outlining the door.  There’s a small branch growing out and curving down like a handle.”            

“It’s big enough for someone to go through?” Melanie asked, her hand resting on her chest in shock.            

“It’s about half the size of an adult.  It’s possible for many sizes to squeeze through.”  Isaac scanned the room, hoping to see one of those tells in an expression that meant they knew he was just weaving one of his stories that may or may not be true.  Then he could pretend that’s all it was.  Maybe when he went home, the door would be gone and he could pretend he was just being his old crotchety self trying to get attention with a story.            
Stokes’ growly voice finally broke the ensuing silence.  “Does the door open, Isaac?”            
Isaac sighed.  He had wanted to find out, he really had.  But he hadn’t had the nerve.  When he met Stokes’ eyes, all he did was shrug.

I was interested. It was good and writen pretty well. Dont forget to indent your paragraphs though. Otherwise everything looks way too blockey.